server room temperature

[mk001]

Hi all,

I want to build the computer server room. I don't know the optimal temperature of server room. Do you have any standard / document to prove that which temperature is optimal?

thanks

 

[burtsbees]

The cooler the better, but you want at least 65 degrees faranheit (or lower). What's more important is ventilation, the servers need to be at least 3 feet away from the wall to properly exhaust internal heat, as they suck in air from the front.
Pizza box servers should also be 1U apart from eachother. You can usually get away with stacking like 5, but I wouldn't go higher than that.

Burt

 

[blister911]

If you space your 1U servers apart, make sure you put filler panel in the front of the racks or you'll get improper air flow. Like Burt said, the air flow goes front to back. (It also goes from the bottom up). If you don't have the front and back segregated, you'll get more mixing. Not that mixing is a total disaster, but the more mixing you have the more cooling you need to do so that the air being brought into the servers is <65 degrees.

Right now we are working on completely segregating the front and backs of our racks to improve the cooling; not just within the rack but the entire rack, itself. To illustrate, imagine the front half of the rack on one side of a wall and the back half on the other with positive air flow on the front and negative on the back. Very little hot and cold air will mix in front of the servers.

 

[mk001]

Thanks for your reply.

My boss need the proof or any standard of server room temperature. I know that he want to save the charge of electricity. He want to make the server room temperature to 30 degree Celsius. i think he is crazy.

So, is there any standard of server room temperature in IT field?

 

[burtsbees]

That's 86 farenheit---he IS nuts. Let him know you are talking with techs with a lot of experience. There is not necessarily a standard, but every server room I have been to where the guys know what they're doing are around 65 farenheit. Your boss will spend 10 times the money that it would cost to cool the room properly when he fries all his servers, routers, switches and UPS's. A boss like that sounds like he/she doesn't want to spend the money to do much of anything right, like redundancy, if he/she wants to save $ on the bill by heating the server room...that's one of the dumbest things I have ever heard, and I have been doing this for a long time, from desktops to servers, touters, switches, and everything in between, including users who ask questions that make you wonder if their IQs are above room temperature.

Burt

 

[mk001]

i know that my boss did not has IT background. He just want to save $$$$$$$. I know that he must set server room temperature to 30 degree Celsius if i cannot give him any proof or standart of this.

i know that the server may burn out if they all run under 30 degree Celsius. If this happens, he must fxxk me why I set the room temperature to 30 degree Celsius(in fact, he call me to do this).

 

[cajuntank]

Then see if he would like his office set to 86F with a little 10" box fan running in the corner of his office circulating hot air over him. His body tempurature is only 98.6F; he wouldn't last all day working in those conditions. Why would he think a processor would last a long period of time in those conditions without issues?

Is there some documentation out there somewhere that states what the optimal operating tempurature is? Maybe.
But it can easily be looked at using common sense.
It doesn't take you being in direct sunlight to get sun burned.

 

[TheLad]

I would have a look in the server manuals. The operating temperatures will be in there. Your boss is wanting to keep the servers stored at a temperature that is almost exceeding the maxinum recommended temperature - this will ultimately lead to more hardware failures than normal so what cost to your business will that cause?

Below is a link to the DL380 G5 manual, the Environmental Specifications are on Page 96. It is worth noting that although the server can operate for short periods of time at 95F, this will cause cautionary and critical temperature levels which cause the server to automatically shut down (a protection measure if you like).

http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00710359/c00710359.pdf

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[burtsbees]

I'm waiting for his boss to say, "Well, if the room is 86F, the servers can't get hotter than that"...lol

Burt

 

[blister911]

TheLad, I was going to mention similar to your point. While the servers can operate at a higher temperature what is it worth to have them running. If they continuously shut down due to over-heating, the downtime and loss of unsaved user data will far outrun the cost of cooling.

Another point to mention is that as the temp in the room goes up the fans in the server will speed up to try and cool the system. So, the electricity saved by not cooling the room is comsumed by the servers, anyway.

Then you have the time it takes to manually cool the room; open doors, run fans, etc. And IT is usually in charge of doing that. Oh, don't forget the time spent praying that the server shut down before anything actually fried.

Maybe this is a bad assumption on my part, as we try to achieve 99.999% uptime. Maybe mk001's company is satisfied with something closer to 75%.

 

[burtsbees]

And of course the more a server overheats, the lower the thresholds for heat tolerance for RAM and the CPU become.

Burt

 

[TheLad]

Plus if the backup media is tape, the heat in the room could lower the operating cycle of the tapes because the drives are overheating - hey it's possible I suppose....

There are so many things to consider here, although blister's point about the servers running at 100% to cool down is a very valid one. Might be worth checking the docs for power consumption of the servers.

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[SteveRoadWarrior]

Don't forget that even if he wants the temp to be 86 degrees, that he'll need to be pumping 71 degree or lower air into the front of the servers in order to achieve 86 out the back.

Guys like this don't think ahead. Play his game. Measure at the back of the server, not the front. Tell him (rightly) that the room needs to be much cooler.

 

[TheLad]

It might be worth asking him what hardware contract you have (if any above and beyond your server warranty) because he'll need it as the servers will break down

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[burtsbees]

That's where my company comes in...

Burt

 

[mk001]

hi all,

after i read all your points, i told it to my boss. He consider it few day and he told me that the room is set to 21 degree Celsius.

I think it is acceptable.

Thank your for all your help.

 

[burtsbees]

Yeah---that's 69.8 degrees farenheit---that will work great! Good job!
GO TEK-TIPS!

Burt

 

[NetworkTek]

I work for a school district and our server room is about 85 to 88 degrees. There is no arguing with them either. They think that i am blowing it our of proportion that it is necessary to keep the room in the sixties. What is crazy our server room is roughly 8 x 12 with 8 servers, 6 switches, 1 router , 3 ups, filter/proxy/firewall appliance and a big canon ir3220 color copier. With one vent coming into the room. It amazes that they will not even consider cooling in the room

Network+ Inet+ MCP

 

[SteveRoadWarrior]

Sounds frustrating, but there is one thing you can do...

Get it in writing. You need to make your case clearly in writing and have them sign off on it. Make duplicate copies, even give them a copy. When any piece of hardware fails (and the ensuing downtime), just remind them that this was their decision and that higher server room temps can cause hardware to fail prematurely.

Then do what you can but don't stress over it, if anyone starts a witch hunt you'll be ok.